time zones

another day rolls over 

into tomorrow

I wake, roll over in bed 

reach for my phone

                                            wondering if my mother 

                                             texted me in the night--

                                             it happens a lot as we're

                                             in different time zones 

                                             

then the screen flickers    

my brain reboots

and the past three months

come charging back

                                             and I... remember why 

                                             she doesn't text

                                             and why she can't call

                                             still most days 

I will catch myself 

"saving things" 

for our nightly chats 

although she died 

                                            nearly three months ago...

                                            but when I listen  

                                            to her old voicemails

                                            her voice starlit

gathering warmth and love

I wonder what if 

what if

what if

the past is just another kind 

of time zone

__________________

Pic: Nu's pic of me, Max, and Huck napping. I guess I'm happy when I'm asleep? I love how Max sticks his tongue out when he's happy. (The plates of half-eaten food everywhere are Nu's thing while they're home on Thanksgiving break.)

post Friendsgiving post

While I was puttering around, putting things away after dinner, I found these three (At, Huck, and Max) all cozied up...

At told me she's moving to Chicago at the end of year. 

"At the end of the year," so there's some time, I thought. Before realizing that it's already the end of November. 

I'm happy for her as she's outgrown Lansing. And she was supposed to move to Seattle this year before all the tragedies happened. And Chicago is much closer. But it will mean that our impromptu trips and hangs are numbered.

Nu who was napping elsewhere when I took this pic watched the Lilith Fair documentary with me. I watched it earlier this month and LOVED IT SO MUCH. I laughed, I cried, I goosebumped up, I texted people about it, I was inspired... When I say something is feminist, this is what I want it to mean--not merely that it's women-centered, but that it is anti-patriarchal. That it is about people who support each other, that they offer opportunities to groups who are typically shut out, that they make childcare and family healthcare available, that they listen to critique (for instance, that black women artists are underrepresented) without getting defensive and work to fix it, that there is confidence being in such a space that racists and homophobes are unwelcome. 

Nu and I were looking at each other all starry-eyed, wishing we could go to one...

T for Thanksgiving!

I like how our additional table (build a longer table is my guiding motto), turns our seating into a T for Thanksgiving!

(Although I want to call it Friendsgiving or Thanksloving or something else entirely to avoid celebrating colonial narrative... even as I acknowledge the aspect of gratitude... anyway...)

somehow...

we're doing Friendsgiving at our place...

Friends are coming over armed with support and food and we'll have some international students too...

But that doesn't mean I don't feel the need to prep our standard menu. It has actually proved to be a good distraction.

The family menu has been fixed for... IDK... the last ten or so years? But this year, I added icons to remind myself of what could be bought/prepped before the day, and it has been a life-changer!

___________________

Pic: The kitchen is crowded and cluttered in the lead up the big feast and I'm kinda... happy?

among my more mundane considerations

One of the weirder things I've caught myself thinking is that now that I have my my mom's picture on the altar in addition to Scout's picture, my Baldwin votary, and all the Hindu, Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Pagan, and other spiritual paraphernalia I have going on...

no one else better die because 

I have no more room on the altar.

empty friend

try not to touch

this narrow secret

where turning informer

I learn the limits

of contagious history

the cold, lucid account

that decides if you

are calling for someone 

or just... crying  for them 

_____________________

Pic: Max and Huck eye the treat jar and contemplate ringing the bell for service.

a physic of sisterhood

the swift traffic of anger and rage

the slow wheels of despair

hope breaking like time 

in a song

my childhood watches carefully 

as  your  cruelties turn into 

a street that forgot where

it was going

how you are writing your story 

for a small woman although

I know no small women--

am more than one

_________

Pic: Full moon last week (when I started this poem).

umm..

Well, this was unexpected...

Not if you'd been paying attention to the weather forecast, of course...

But I've been in my own head a lot lately.

Deadlines and projects seem to be multiplying, so I sat and wrote them all down to figure out how I'm going to get them all done.

one at a time, naturally...

Pic: I can't deny how beautiful the backyard looks.

distraction central

Max, Big A, and Huck are all wrestling at my feet and it makes it very difficult to get grading done... 

don't you remember this moment?

we are kneeling

at a cliff's edge

      in prayer 

      or defeat

rocks enthroned

trees congregate

      benumbed

      or tranquil

there you are born

dropping headfirst

      like a diver

      into life

your body, landscape

your cries a chorus

      all longing

      and love

__________

Pic: E.M.'s post-dinner pic of Max and Huck.

I will always be writing this poem

it may take years and years 
to tell me the world

but I am stubborn 

I am shocked in sections

to realize my mother 

open as a shadow 

in the middle of this life

I find myself lying

flat, face down 

following how my anger

gets lost late at night  

in family elegy

remembering two months

fractured from the hard symmetry of days

from the moment I open my eyes

 aware of every treachery of light

of going away, of disappearing

on rivers of might have been 

and can never will be again 

I beg mercy of shadows 

who, too, will flee 

from me 

_____

Pic: A full moon tonight.

prospectus

the yellow bruise of the morning 

is where I list wonders aloud

& I can't pick myself up

from bending silences

and lock on air

I dare any unknown to find me 

I draw maps to where I am

ghosts already know me

falling through the sky 

all breath only sighs

Pic: Max and Huck are surprised in the guest room.

I wrote about her a lot

...and it felt nice to share the quirky things she used to via the poems.

I wondered if it would make me sad, but it made me happy to see other people smiling and enjoying her quirks too. 

A reading from the Sing Anthology as part of the Chippewa Valley Writing Festival. 

custom

Nu's birthday Eve

Big A's birthday Eve

we've been using the same decorations 

and the same gift bags for years now.

tradition/sustainability/parsimony

The puppies like to check my work.

brand new adult

Not a clear photo, but in the background Nu is laughing their head off and At is grinning. It reminds me of a birthday dinner filled with hi-jinks, ridiculous rules (no kissing! three kinds of potatoes for the table!), and unlooked for consequences (silly dances and jalapeno drinks and Max barfing possibly in response to Nu's bad flute-playing).

I'm glad I was able to make space to make joy before Nu headed out with friends for the rest of the evening. 

On their very first day on earth, the pediatric nurse pronounced Nu "an old soul." 

 They're now a full-fledged adult.

It still seems wild.

changing gears

It's Nu's birthday tomorrow. Nu's 18th birthday! And I woke up this morning determined to change gears. 

Actually, I woke up late this morning, having slept through my alarm for the first time in decades. Still I used the the 28 minutes I had to shower and get ready, used the hour commute to mentally prep myself, and was on time for my 8 am meeting. 

And then when I casually checked my email near the end of the meeting, I saw there was a gift card for Nu from my parents and I could barely keep it together. I wonder how far into the future my mom has arranged things...

Later, someone asked me if I had allergies. Yes, I'm allergic to sorrow.

But... Nu is home for the weekend! We've already had one requested dinner (sushi), cut one cake (pumpkin cheesecake), and done the birthday dec. 

I can't believe it has been 18 years since Big A and I walked hand-in-hand down 1st Ave to the NYU hospital where he worked as a resident, only this time it was for me to get admitted so I could get induced and we could finally meet Nu. (Like At, who was spending that night with Cousin P, Nu was about ten days over the estimated delivery date too).

Pic: Max and Huck are delirious with happiness that Nu's here. I am too.

book-loops

Obviously books and reading are always polyrhythmic and reverberate off each other in a jazz-y way. But I've been looping through book connections recently in ways that made me smile. 

Kadiatou is a character in the new Chimamanda Adichie novel Dreamcount, and when I read Christian Cooper's Better Living Through Birding (our city's "Grand Read" book; Cooper will be here next month) I was reminded that Kadiatou is also the name of the activist who used the 3-million dollar settlement from the unlawful gunning down of her son Amadou Diallo by NYPD to start a foundation to help other immigrants.

I was quite taken by Anand Giridharadas's The Persuaders, which had great suggestions on how to be persuasive and change people's perspectives and thought I'd try Michael Pollan's How to Change Your Mind which sounded similar... except that Pollan's book is about how to change your mind through the use of psychedelics (including LSD, psilocybin and MDMA). Ha! He makes the point that middle age is the time to do this since we're probably stuck in habitual ruts though. Consider me sold.

When I mentioned Braiding Sweetgrass yesterday, Sarah mentioned how awesome Kimmerer's second work, The Serviceberry, is and mentioned giving her firstborn a copy. My firstborn gave me The Serviceberry for Christmas and that's what got me into rereading Braiding Sweetgrass!

And finally, the work of two wonderful authors I know. I wish I could introduce them to each other. Sunny Singh who met with my students in May has a new book of short stories called Refuge out! And as David Shulman's latest article in the New York Review of Books  was a couple of months ago I'm rereading Tamil, one of his classics. David was the head of the Institute for Advanced Studies at Hebrew University in Jerusalem when I was there in 1998. Both Sunny and David have been forthright and outspoken about the genocide in Gaza from the beginning and I am so grateful for their moral clarity. 

Pic: I piled all the books I mentioned here on the table for a glamshot. 

fugue

the road home winds slow 

my bicycle is nodding 

doors open drowsily

why must I tell this story 

                      the edges hesitate
                      tomorrow is unstated
                      but sure to arrive early 

_____________________________

Pic: I thought these were slugs on my hellebores, but they're teeny, tiny frogs--each one the size of a pea! The wonders I continue to discover, sometimes even in my own backyard, amaze me.

the news is sadness

I legit started to cry when I read that Serena Williams... THE Serena Williams, the GOAT... is taking weight-loss medications. People should do whatever they want with their own bodies, obviously. But the idea that this body which propelled her to greatness somehow needed to be made... smaller, made me feel hopeless about people ever being able to escape social size standards. Perhaps this hit me harder because Nicole wrote so movingly about maitri and self-love towards oneself this week. And perhaps some of this was because Big A, who before being sick was the fittest person I know personally--running marathons, doing triathlons, and once even besting Usain Bolt on the Peloton--was thrilled about having lost a significant amount of weight. He has been ill for nearly two months--how is his resultant body change something celebratory?

And then it turns out that our Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy sent letters to all 50 governors calling for the removal of Pride crosswalks. (The connection between transportation and crosswalks seems a bit tenuous to me?) Florida has been the first state to comply. In many places including at the Pulse Nightclub memorial where many LGBTQ people were gunned down in 2016, residents have been chalking pride colors back where they are being erased, and now the governor is sending the police to stand at crosswalks to make sure that doesn't happen. Is this really the most pressing issue for law enforcement? These people seem to have no sense or shame.

Pic: Sunrise with Max. It's in the 40s and chilly this week! Too soon!